It's clean. The Times font is easy to read. It appears less stylish than your previous format and more commercial. The orange of the title and headlines needs to be burnt a bit. It seems new websites are becoming a trend in the niche.

Actually, I think it looks terrible now. It's now just like every other blog I've ever seen. I really liked the vintage "mod" feel of the old design, one of the things (besides the wonderful machinery and insights) that initially interested me when I first saw it.

I guess when you invite comment you're open to whatever may come. I always sign my name to my letters or comments, both negative and positive, and I appreciate it when others do the same.

Now that that's out of the way... Chris, you know I love white space, so I like the new look. But I'm sure there's a typeface between Times (easy to read but boooooooorrrring) and Courier (trendy but hard to read) that's a better fit (Palatino and Garamond come to mind).

You can't please everyone, obviously, one reason being that everyone's computer differs in the typefaces/fonts that are displayed. Remember that half your readers probably never saw the official Velo Orange font in the old banner b/c they didn't have Hafnium loaded in their typeface directory.

In short, don't sweat it. Makeovers are for the most part good. I'd be surprised if regular readers or lurkers stopped checking in b/c they didn't like the look.

I surf everything from Linux and have a very limited font selection so only the basic fonts show up for me. If you need to headline something in a font other than helvetica/times/courier I suggest that you make a PNG or GIF of it. Until Annette mentioned it I had no idea the title bar was supposed to be in an interesting font.

As for the layout: do what makes you happy. We'll read your excellent blog however it's laid out! :)